1-Visitor

Question

PE vs APP vs Print Composer

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
June 24, 2014
37 replies
6760 views

Hi,

We currently use Editor and Print Composer to produce print and PDF manuals. I'm being asked about change page capability for an upcoming RFQ and what we might need to support that. Would that be DTD and style sheet dependent only or do we need another product completely?

I've looked at the PTC product pages and have to admit I'm not sure what the differences are between PE and APP. I can see that APP comes in desktop and enterprise flavors. But I also don't see anything about change page capability on either product.

I was hoping maybe someone on the forum could point me to a good comparison chart or perhaps share a little insight on the differences if you have experience with them.

Thanks,

KM

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N

naglists

1-Visitor

This is my FAIR to GOOD response. But I had very little to say about Change
Page. I think some of you may have read Gareth's TRULY AWESOME response as
suggesting I had said something useful about Change Page which I didn't.

Or maybe some of you did not see my email at all. Not sure. If it went
totally missing, here's the bulk of it. I did send one other follow-up
indicating that I thought Print Composer = FOSI Engine (or that if it now
included APP it added it after I stopped using Print Composer) contrary to
Gareth's suspicion PC does include APP in addition to FOSI.

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Paul Nagai <->
wrote:

> Publishing Engine is a server-side instance of "Editor" more or less.
> Authors use Editor (usually) to submit composition requests to PE across
> their corporate network.
>
> PE has the ability to use either composition engine (FOSI or APP) as well
> as others (XSL, for example).
>
> You should be able to use your current DTD and stylesheet although,
> especially if you are upgrading version-wise, you will probably need to
> make at least a few stylesheet updates to accommodate changes in the
> composition product (even assuming you continue to use the FOSI engine).
> You will have to make more updates if you have complex formatting
> requirements. You Will have to make more updates if you are jumping "far."
> 6.0 to 6.1, probably not too bad. 4.3 to 6.1 ... lots of effort!
>
> You may also be changing how your PDFs are generated. If you are using
> Distiller on your PC, you can use it with PE but (last I looked) Adobe
> licenses a server-side version of Distiller for a lot more than the
> workstation pricing. (PE, too, will be lots more expensive than your Editor
> license.) Many people choose to use the PDF generation capability that
> ships "free" with PE "PDF Direct" or "Direct PDF" I can never remember. It
> behaves differently in a couple of ways that may also require stylesheet
> and supporting file (.dcf, for example) updates.
>
> Moving to the APP composition engine is probably a much bigger jump ...
> but I can't speak directly to that since I've never done it. Anyhow, if you
> were using Styler, it wouldn't probably be that bad (assuming a minimum of
> source edits), but from FOSI, it may be a big deal. Again, the more complex
> your FOSI, the bigger the jump.
>
> Change Page is something of a beast. Your DTD and stylesheet will most
> definitely be deeply involved with that requirement. Again, not something
> I've done, so I can't speak to that from experience. Whether there is APP
> support for that, I don't recall. I think you're in FOSI-land if you're
> doing Change Page.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Kim McCain <->
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> We currently use Editor and Print Composer to produce print and PDF
>> manuals. I'm being asked about change page capability for an upcoming RFQ
>> and what we might need to support that. Would that be DTD and style sheet
>> dependent only or do we need another product completely?
>>
>> I've looked at the PTC product pages and have to admit I'm not sure what
>> the differences are between PE and APP. I can see that APP comes in desktop
>> and enterprise flavors. But I also don't see anything about change page
>> capability on either product.
>>
>> I was hoping maybe someone on the forum could point me to a good
>> comparison chart or perhaps share a little insight on the differences if
>> you have experience with them.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> KM
>>
>>
>>
>

P

ptc-1908075

1-Visitor

Hi Kim,

If you experience sticker shock at the price ofArbortext'sChange Page for Defense Application with consulting and maintenance, let's talk!A partner and I developed a proof-of-concept change pages application using FOSI and ACL, which I demoedto Ed Benton and his group a few years ago using Print Composer. The application is DTD-specific andwould be customized for your DTD.

Re: APP, there is a link on my website (

E

ebenton

1-Visitor

Yes. I remember that demo. It would have been feasible for us. I think at the time, our customer’s fervor for the application was either premature or waning. I don’t remember which. In the following time period, we have continued to hear rumblings, but so far no money has appeared.

BTW, Suzanne, your APP vs. FOSI link on fosiexpert.com would not open the PDF file in IE 11 on my PC. I had to download the PDF to my hard drive and read it there. It’s a very enlightening document.

K

kmccain

Author

1-Visitor

Suznne,

Thanks for the info and pdf link. That was interesting and definitely helps me understand the differences. It also confirms for me that APP probably isn't the way I want to go with this. I am waiting for info from my reseller regarding the Change Page app - it looks like that requires purchasing PE so I'm sure the price tag is steep. I would love a solution that would work with Print Composer so I will likely be getting back to you on this for more information about your proof-of-concept.

Thanks,

KM

P

ptc-1908075

1-Visitor

Hi Kim,

Just let me know. In the meantime, be aware that in my experience, the most important thing is to fully understand the requirements ahead of time. This may not be as easy as it sounds. I have found that people tend to make different, unstated assumptions about the requirements, which can turn out to be a big problem if discovered too late.

Good luck!
Suzanne

P

ptc-1908075

1-Visitor

Hi Ed,

Just let me know if the need arises.

G

GarethOakes

16-Pearl

Hi Kim,

I can't speak on behalf of PTC, I have only heard rumours. If you are interested to learn more than I would encourage you to contact a PTC representative who can give you the full story. For example our company (www.gpsl.co) is an Arbortext partner of PTC, or you may have a direct account manager available at PTC themselves.

// Gareth Oakes
// Chief Architect, GPSL
// www.gpsl.co

G

GarethOakes

16-Pearl

Hi Adepters,

While I agree that the FOSI-vs-APP PDF makes for interesting reading it is inaccurate on a number of points. I hate to disagree with Suzanne but I feel compelled to call out a few items, as the PDF is advertised as a factual document.

* "APP is for magazines". In fact I know of no successful implementation of APP for magazines.
* I have however personally seen APP used by big "household names" for successful production systems in areas such as:
* Service information (operator, service, tech manuals): aerospace, defense, automative, aviation, etc.
* Legislation and legal documentation: public and private sector
* Catalogs: parts catalogs, medical catalogs, chemical product listings, etc.
* Scientific journals, journal articles, books, scholarly monographs, etc.
* Codes & standards documents
* Tertiary & Higher education: textbooks, training materials, reference books, etc.
* Financial publishing: annual reports, shareholder reports, filings, etc.
* Pharmaceutical publishing
* Page 3 – formatting speed – neither APP nor FOSI are poor–performing print engines.
* We (GPSL) have been brought in a number of times to improve systems where performance was problematic. In all cases of perceived "APP slowness" we discovered it was Styler producing poor APP code.
* Page 4 – APP is not at additional cost, the APP engine ships with all Arbortext print-capable products. This is because APP is installed as the default and preferred print engine for PTC Arbortext.
* Page 4 – "Bottom Line". Whilst opinions will obviously vary, the table is presented as a factual yes/no grading. If we work purely from the facts then it seems APP cannot be marked "thumbs down" for: Designed for Service Information, Formatting Speed, Software Cost.

Now to personal opinions. As the resident "APP guy" I guess others may be interested in my thoughts based on 13 years experience with APP and 10 years with Arbortext:

* Complexity – for any non-trivial stylesheet, some type of software engineering mindset or skills are required. This is regardless of underlying stylesheet language or product. There is no silver bullet.
* Javascript in APP has brought significant benefits to stylesheet development. Can you guess what myText.color = "red" does?
* FOSI has some annoying shortcomings, making it really challenging to use for non-trivial stylesheets. The sky is the limit with APP 🙂
* FOSI is effective for simple jobs, but is a dying (dead?) language: SGML moved on to DSSSL, which itself evolved to XSL, while usable implementations of FOSI were only ever provided by Arbortext and DataLogics
* Mature implementations of XSL-FO (eg. Antenna House) are now price, performance and feature competitive with Arbortext for low-mid complexity print jobs. Meanwhile the Arbortext XSL-FO support appears to have stagnated.

Just my 2c worth, I hope it forms a useful contribution to the discussion.

// Gareth Oakes
// Chief Architect, GPSL
// www.gpsl.co

G

GarethOakes

16-Pearl

Hi Kim,

I thought I would write up some of the history of Arbortext/APP, as well as current state of play for the benefit of the group. I hope this helps answer your query "what is APP?"

In the scope of Arbortext print publishing, we have two different lines of ancestry: Arbortext and APP. Arbortext acquired Advent3B2 in 2004 to fulfil their future needs for a high-performance print engine. The 3B2 product was renamed to APP (Advanced Print Publisher) shortly after the acquisition.

As Suzanne's article points out, APP was originally designed as a desktop publishing product based on best-in-breed typesetting and advanced features. This was circa 1986; the best design decision made during inception was to base the document format on SGML. This was in the days of WordPerfect, WordStar, etc. which all relied on proprietary and incompatible binary document formats.

Fast forward to today and SGML effectively "became" XML, so APP is a native XML tool just like Arbortext. Along the way APP gained a whole load of powerful typesetting and composition features, and Javascript support to allow that power to be tamed.

Arbortext integrated APP into their core software such that there are now two print engines. Each print engine has its own stylesheet format, but you can use Arbortext Styler to write a "master" stylesheet which can then be used to drive either of the two print engines.

1. FOSI is a US DoD specification for SGML publishing. In Arbortext, FOSI stylesheets are merged with the content to form TeX documents. The TeX documents are then fed through the built-in TeX engine of Arbortext to produce DVI (print preview) or PDF.

2. APP was designed by commercial software house Advent3B2. APP templates are much more freeform than FOSI stylesheets (imperative vs declarative). Arbortext loads APP templates into the built-in APP engine and the content is then fed into APP in order to produce the PDF or print preview.

Each print engine has its strengths and weaknesses but APP is now the default print engine for Arbortext.

BTW, in case you're interested, Arbortext handles XSL-FO by translating the XSL stylesheet(s) to FOSI format.

// Gareth Oakes
// Chief Architect, GPSL
// www.gpsl.co

E

ebenton

1-Visitor

I just recently installed IE 11. Maybe the PDF plug-in didn’t get installed.

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